


burn scars, cold snap, frostbite, embers

by Anonymous



Category: Promare (2019)
Genre: Gen, Post-Canon, Trauma, cultural trauma
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-26
Updated: 2020-01-26
Packaged: 2021-02-27 03:34:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 643
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22420408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: Lio visits a memorial to the Burnish dead.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 41
Collections: Anonymous





	burn scars, cold snap, frostbite, embers

**Author's Note:**

> Broad content warning for taking the canon levels of bigotry and genocide very seriously.
> 
> The motivation behind this is that I'm Jewish and being presented with the "happy ending" of Promare after seeing the horrors in it was a little... hmmmmm. It's great to have an optimistic story! But it made me think a lot about the complicated, difficult processes of living/remembering in the wake of such immense harm.

There were no names on this massive stone. Not because there were too many to fit; the various Burnish memorial efforts and historians, keepers of records all, would have made damn sure the remembrance of their dead took up an entire Promepolis city block if it needed to. No, there were no names carved here because there were _too many nameless bodies_.

People who had fought Freeze Force and been killed instead of captured. People who had started desperate fires, immune to the heat of their own flames, but been buried in the unmarked grave of a collapsed building. People who had starved out in the desert ruins. People who had gotten sick with no healthcare besides a kiss and a prayer. People who had been lit up in the cells of Kray's engine and burnt to piles of anonymous ash.

Sometimes, people—Burnish and flameless alike—from older generations than Lio's own would tell him about the world 'before.' Before the Great World Burn. They would almost always say it just like that: "You know, things were so different before..."

Three decades was _nothing_. And yet, apparently, it was everything. Three decades ago, the whole globe had caught flame; in one single day, life had turned on its head. Of course, it didn't have to have. Lio could never forget that the flameless had had the option to offer a hand to their frightened, burning brothers and instead they turned their backs. But people chose to believe in a day that tore humanity in two, and by believing in it, they made it real.

Before the Burn, it had been the luck of a privileged few to close their eyes and minds to global suffering. When all the towns and cities of the world caught fire, so many flameless found it easiest to shift their gazes an inch or two to the side, so they didn't have to see the Burnish crying...

That was cruel of Lio. Flameless had feelings too, even then. They were scared, too; afraid they were under attack, terrified they were dying. Lio was being cruel. He _knew_ that.

He was still right, though.

Anyway. People told Lio about the world before the Burn because, of course, he’d never been there to see it. His own birth came a couple years into the cold aftermath—when the few remaining cities in the world were well underway in their processes of restructuring and rebuilding. When nascent hubs like Promepolis were looking toward the future as it 'should' be after feeling like the past had betrayed them.

Lio was born into the world as it was looking for its scapegoat.

Now he sat, bundled in a winter jacket and handmade scarf but still chilled to the bone in front of this memorial to the countless, countless dead. It had been a year and change since the sudden departure of the Promare, and Lio still felt their absence down to his very soul. 

And while he should be happy for that—the Burnish were free! Kray's trial was on the calendar!—that wasn't it. That wasn't it, was it? When Kray was really only a figurehead. When people like Biar and even Heris had been right there pushing the buttons, too. When Burnish had been pulled out of their homes and off the streets.

All of Promepolis should have been on trial, but that wasn't the way these things went.

Tired, now, sick and exhausted through to his bones, Lio closed his eyes and leaned toward the stone. His forehead pressed against the cold, carved rock. He wanted to thank them... He wanted to apologize... But there was nothing to say.

There was a heavy weight catching in his throat and a hollow ache where relief should have been. An enormous frozen emptiness, deep inside. 

But there was nothing to say. 


End file.
